Great Character: Carl Fredricksen (“Up”)

This month’s theme: Pixar. Today’s guest post by Jason Cuthbert features Carl Fredericksen from the 2009 movie Up, screenplay by Bob Peterson & Pete Docter, story by Pete Docter & Bob Peterson & Thomas McCarthy.

At some point in our lives we all seem to have that creepy isolated elderly neighbor whose cranky cold facial expressions remain frozen, even in the summer. We smile at them. Nothing. We attempt a conversation with them. Nothing. But before you start spreading the exaggerated gossip that equally closed-minded neighbors defame these loner elders with, please watch Pixar’s 2009 Oscar-winning animated heart-warmer Up.

Directors Pete Docter (Monsters, Inc.) and Bob Peterson (The Good Dinosaur) were also the screenwriters and the creators of the story Up, along with Thomas McCarthy. These prestigious Pixar storytellers have provided not just a comedic adventure that explores the vacant terrain inside the generation gap, but gives us a potential back-story to why that apparent hermit next door could possibly be so anti-social and ornery. Maybe because they lost the love of their life.

Up plot summary from IMDB:

By tying thousands of balloons to his home, 78-year-old Carl sets out to fulfill his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years younger, inadvertently becomes a stowaway.

Carl Fredricksen, voiced by Ed Asner, is that lonely senior curmudgeon neighbor that lost both loves of his life — his wife and female counterpart Ellie, as well as his longing for adventure. Carl’s solitude extends outside of his shut front door; he no longer has neighbors to completely ignore, because urban development planning has removed neighborhood houses away from Carl’s home. Just the visual composition of Carl Fredricksen’s lonely house with gaping holes surrounding it is a clear picture that our protagonist is not only alone physically, but is unwilling to change his private nature.

CARL FREDRICKSEN: Tell your boss he can *have* my house.
CONSTRUCTION FOREMAN TOM: Really?
CARL FREDRICKSEN: Yeah. When I’m dead!

But even when Carl lets his fear of change get the better of him, and whacks a construction worker with his cane for accidentally smashing his mailbox, we fear what will happen to Carl more than anything else. How is it possible to remain emotionally invested in a sour senior citizen that kids would never ask for candy on Halloween? The answer is: because Pixar didn’t develop the cardboard, “Get off my lawn,” jealous of the young, generic grumpy old man. Carl Fredricksen is a respectable, multi-faceted hybrid of nostalgia and romantic love. That type of Romeo and Juliet until-death-do-us-part love that defies all contemporary escalating divorce statistics.

Carl Fredricksen may be heart-broken, but he isn’t taking it out on others. He lost his wife, he has no children and he never became an adventurer like his idol Charles Muntz. Fortunately, Carl gets to experience a sense of fatherhood via his 8 year-old airborne co-pilot Russell.

CARL FREDRICKSEN: (to Russell) I don’t want your help, I want you safe.

But when Carl does meet his nomadic champion Charles Muntz, he realises that Muntz is nothing worth looking up to. The jaded explorer that Carl is introduced to is now nothing more than a violent, bitter megalomaniac who has shut himself off from the world for more than half of his life to redeem his career credibility by unsuccessfully searching for a rare creature.

CARL FREDRICKSEN: This is crazy. I finally meet my childhood hero and he’s trying to kill us. What a joke.

The question is, did Carl become just like Charles Muntz, focused on one thing (Ellie) so much that all the other beautiful aspects of life are passing him by? At 78 years young, Carl isn’t looking to get his groove back after losing his wife Ellie. Carl is trying to simply maintain his personal Carl & Ellie museum inside his home, preserving the antiques and artifacts that make his memories appear real. Only Carl can feel Ellie’s presence looming over him, so Carl fears letting anyone else get too close to his internal sanctuary, disrupting his cosmic connection to the only person that seems to have ever took the time to understand him.

Carl and Ellie’s introductory marriage sequence feels like the loveliest short film ever made in the silent film era, dropped inside a modern Pixar blockbuster. Graceful. Bittersweet. Tragic. Just look at the magnitude of “Carlisms” that are planted during this sequence and later paid off in the narrative. The Carl and Ellie marriage sequence shows their handprints getting added to the mailbox that Carl is emotionally attached to. We learn Carl’s expertise with helium balloons was also his career. Ellie’s desire for children, a house on Paradise Falls and the importance of her My Adventure Book is revealed. Even Carl and Ellie’s daydreaming images inside of clouds are a preface to Carl’s traveling adventures through the skies later in the story. These quiet moments in Up consist of visual storytelling that hits the heart harder than overwrought dialogue.

Those familiar somber piano keys return for another tour inside Carl’s rattled heart. The same way Ellie’s enthusiastic sense of adventure motivated Carl’s hushed, conservative stride during childhood and into marriage, it is also Ellie’s message that Carl discovers in her My Adventure Book travel diary that stirs Carl’s bland stew and introduces new enticing spices to his life:

“Thanks for the adventure — now go have a new one!” This urgent call-to-action from Ellie, then Carl immediately finding Russell’s wilderness explorer badges sitting on Ellie’s empty seat, equate to a pure spiritual moment. This is emotional communication between souls — from Carl and Ellie’s distant dimensions. Keep on living Carl; other people need your natural sense of compassion and loyalty too.

Sure, the adventure and super cool flying house high concept elements of Up are insanely entertaining and reopen childhood fantasies of wishing we could fly and roam freely. But its those grounded interpersonal moments between Carl and the memories of Ellie, the adventurous Marion Ravenwood to Carl’s Indiana Jones, that awakens our own fear of losing loved ones and prevents Up from ever being full of hot air.

For his noble Soldier of Love stance, his fearless refusal to settle for the regimented Earth-bound existence of a nursing home and his commitment to making his and his late wife’s dreams come true — Carl Fredricksen is above all else a GREAT CHARACTER.

Do you remember my series The Theology of Screenwriting? Carl’s metamorphosis is an example of resurrection, metaphorical of course. His Disunity state can be summed up this way: Life-less. That is once his beloved Ellie dies, he is stuck, unable to move forward, stringing out the days of his beleaguered existence. Through his Hero’s Journey, everything he experiences and especially the connection he makes with his ad hoc ‘family’ — Russell, Doug, Kevin — gives him new purpose, brings him back to life… in other words resurrection.

Thanks to Jason for yet another Great Character post. Join us in comments for a discussion of Carl and why he is such a compelling character.

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